{"id":16192,"date":"2013-08-30T16:39:44","date_gmt":"2013-08-30T16:39:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leedpoints.com\/?guid=27d30ff7b5ff590d947f1bac11d155f2"},"modified":"2013-08-30T16:39:44","modified_gmt":"2013-08-30T16:39:44","slug":"no-jive-tofurky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leedpoints.com\/green-building-blog\/no-jive-tofurky\/","title":{"rendered":"No jive Tofurky"},"content":{"rendered":null,"protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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Tofurky<\/a>, the 33-year-old maker of the widely recognized line of meat-free, meat-like products, has cooked up the second LEED Platinum<\/a> food processing facility in the country, and the sixth such facility in the world.<\/p>\n

Turtle Island Foods’ new $10 million, 33,000-square-foot plant in the outdoorsy Columbia River Gorge community of Hood River, OR, was constructed using 80 percent locally sourced materials. It’s being outfitted with roughly 400 solar panels capable of producing more than 100 kilowatt hours of electricity annually, a 1,400-square-foot eco-roof with its own vegetable garden and a bocce court, and a free solar-powered electric car charging station. The building is 34 percent more efficient than Oregon code in energy efficiency, and 40 percent more efficient water use, according to The Paramus Post<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Located near the shoreline at Hood River Waterfront Park<\/a>, the new facility is expected to carve energy use out of Tofurky production by a full 40 to 50 percent, according to company executive vice president Jaime Athos.<\/p>\n

“The decision to attempt to achieve the highest level of LEED certification was a no-brainer,” Athos said. “It is an authentic expression of both the mission of our company and the personal values of my family.”<\/p>\n

Tofurky was founded by CEO Seth Tibbott, who used his life savings of $2,500 and additional family investments to begin making tempeh in 1980. He introduced the popular Tofurky roast in 1995. Today, Tofurky is one of the fastest-growing brands in the natural foods meat-free category and in 2013 is enjoying its “most successful year ever,” according to the brand, which remains family-owned.<\/p>\n

“Though I had a hunch 33 years ago that plant-based foods would one day be more popular, it’s safe to say that this company and this new plant are beyond my wildest dreams,” Tibbott said. <\/p>\n

All of the brand’s products, including new frozen Pockets, Pot Pies and the world’s first vegan Quiche, as well as frozen pizza, tempeh, deli slices, sausages and hot dogs, are made from organic soy and\/or tofu, which is legally required to be free of genetically modified ingredients<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Although the new Hood River facility facility will not be operational until 2014, the company is hosting a grand opening<\/a> September 6-8. The three-day event offers an array of activities including rafting and hiking excursions, vegetarian cooking classes, tours of the new facility, a disco and costume ball, and golf, bocce, and disc golf tournaments.<\/p>\n

Editor’s note:<\/strong> Designation as the first LEED Platinum food processing facility in the United States is claimed The California Processing Tomato Industry Pilot Plant at UC Davis’ August A. Busch III Brewing and Food Science Laboratory, which was featured by Sustainable Industries in June<\/a> for other groundbreaking green building innovations. <\/em><\/p>\n

Slideshow photo by Tifotter<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[12074,12075,118,3294,12076],"class_list":["post-16192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-green-building-posts","tag-food-processing","tag-hood-river","tag-leed-platinum","tag-sustainable-buildings","tag-tofurky"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/leedpoints.com\/green-building-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/leedpoints.com\/green-building-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/leedpoints.com\/green-building-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leedpoints.com\/green-building-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leedpoints.com\/green-building-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/leedpoints.com\/green-building-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16192\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/leedpoints.com\/green-building-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leedpoints.com\/green-building-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leedpoints.com\/green-building-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}